Where to begin
with
such a book. It is clearly and definitely the best book ever done
on Krazy Kat, which is, at least in our estimation, the greatest work
ever
produced in comics form. Ergo, it is, Copacetically speaking, the best
single
volume of comics ever produced. In other words, it wins the
Deserted
Island Award™: If there were one comics related
book we’d
take with us
to
a deserted island, this would undoubtedly be it. And as if that
weren’t
enough, it has now been reissued in an economy softcover edition
that’ll
only set you back a double sawbuck. Think of it – a lifetime of
pleasure
and consolation for what it would cost you to spend a few hours in a
bar.
And they say there is no God.

For
sheer aesthetic
achievement,
narrative inventiveness, psychological incisiveness, cultural
significance,
and creative ebullience, Krazy Kat, the masterpiece in comics that
George
Herriman produced on a daily* basis from 1913 through 1944 cannot be
beat.
This volume provides a judiciously selected, finely reproduced and
intelligently
arranged collection of George Herriman’s work accompanied by an
engrossing
account of his life and career.

By way of
introduction, the
authors made the amazingly apt decision to start things off by
reprinting
Gilbert Seldes’s one-of-a-kind essay, “The Krazy Kat That Walks by
Himself,”
that appeared originally as one of the chapters of his volume, The
Seven
Lively Arts, published in 1924 . A brief biography of
Herriman’s
formative years provides the reader with some potential insights into
his
character and its bearing on his subsequent creations before getting to
the main act.

The dawning of a new
century
coincided almost exactly with the birth of a new mass-market medium for
the communication of artistic expression and the beginning of George
Herriman’s
artistic career working within that medium, which, for lack of a better
name, has come to be known as comics. Beginning with
Herriman’s
early years as a journeyman illustrator who hopped a freight to the Big
Apple in hopes of making it as a cartoonist (which he succeeded at
almost
immediately, but not before a short stretch as a Coney Island sign
painter
and side show barker), then detailing his involvement in the early
development
of the comic strip that followed fast and furious on the heels of the
introduction
of Richard Outcault’s The Yellow Kid, the authors present an engaging
account
of the early days of the comic strip as seen through Herriman’s
experiences.

Illustrations,
political
cartoons and comics strips all served the paramount function of
catching
the public’s eye and thereby boosting the circulation of the newspaper
in which they appeared. Herriman proved himself adept at all
three
and early on caught the attention of what was perhaps the most
important
eyes of all, those of William Randolph Hearst, the powerful newspaper
magnate
upon whom Orson Welles based the title character of his landmark film, Citizen
Kane. While Herriman was to leave and/or be lured
away from Hearst papers on numerous occasions during the first decade
of
his career, he eventually settled with the newspaper syndicate
controlled
by Hearst, whose patronage was to ultimately prove crucial to Krazy’s
longevity.

Herriman produced
many different
comic strips during the decade that preceded his creation of Krazy Kat.
They're all discussed here and are accompanied by reproductions of
representative
examples. In fact, Krazy and Ignatz first appeared in one of these
strips.
Running along the empty white space at the foreground of the July 26,
1910
installment of "The Dingbat Family"-- which the authors of this
esteemed
volume have unearthed and presented for our erudition-- in what may
have
been simply a half-conscious doodle to fill up the space while killing
time at his desk in the Hearst offices, Herriman drew the historical
first
beaning of Kat by Mouse. The rest, as they say, is history, and
this
book does an admirable job of reporting it.

The bulk of the book
is,
blissfully, filled with high quality reproductions of the strips
themselves.
Most of the daily strips -- which are only a small minority, the bulk
being,
for obvious reasons, the Sunday Pages -- are reproduced from what is in
almost all cases the best remaining source, the syndicate proofs.
Of the wonderful Sunday pages, the authors managed to assemble quite a
few originals to reproduce, primarily of those that originally appeared
in black & white, which is how the strip ran in newspapers from
1916
through 1933. The strips that ran after 1933 and which originally
appeared in color are here reproduced from mint condition copies of the
actual newspapers in which they originally ran.

A selection of
photographs
of Herriman, his family and his friends round out this eminent volume
which
provides the gentle reader with a joyful bounty of what is still
comics’
greatest creation.

PLEASE NOTE:
Due to
the large size and weight of this item, there is a surchargeof $3.50 added to
Priority
Mail shipments and $1.50 to Media Mail shipments.

*(and when we say "daily,"
we are not, of course, by any stretch of the imagination meaning to
imply that there were only "dailies" being produced, for it would be a
massive oversight indeed to omit mention of the splendiferous Sunday
pages which are the acme of the Kat's manifestation) back

We also offer all the
volumes in the ongoing Fantagraphics series collecting the complete run
of Krazy Kat Sunday pages, HERE!